this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Which got wrecked worse by Lake Superior? Tom Fitton or the Edmund Fitzgerald? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Alright, sure. L. D. Landau, E. M. Lishitz: Course on Theoretical Physics 5: Statistical Physics, English translation 1951, p. 467ff, subchapter Wetting.

I'm lost as to why you are citing this.

This is established science. I just thought Wikipedia might be an easier introduction.

Nobody throughout this thread is using specific jargon from the field of statistical physics.

We're simply discussing what the word "wet" means. I am not interested in your niche scientific subchapter on "wetting" in a 1951 theoretical physics textbook.

I don't know what point you're trying to make.

What that wikipedia article is explaining is that if you are interested in the meaning of a word and not just factual information about it, an encyclopedia (wikipedia) entry is the wrong place to look because "unlike a dictionary", it's not focused on the meaning of words.

What? I legit don't understand what you're trying to say. You linked a user-curated dictionary and pretended that's the be-all, end-all of definitions.

Uh, you linked it. Thats your source. I just used it because you linked it as a source you trust?

You accidentally linked "wetting", but if you look at link you sent and go to the top of the page where it says

For other uses of 'Wet', see Wet (disambiguation)

And then click that and you'll see

Look up wet, wetness, or wetting in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

It's literally just 2 clicks inside the source you linked as the end-all, be-all lmao.

You're right, I wouldn't have just linked a dictionary entry as a thought ending cliche until you tried to and I showed you what your own source was saying about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have no actual stake in this discussion beyond the fun of arguing. I could continue, for example by pointing out that in the article about "Encyclopedia" you linked it says

There are some broad differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries. Most noticeably, encyclopedia articles are longer, fuller and more thorough than entries in most general-purpose dictionaries.[3][20] There are differences in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries provide linguistic information about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus more on the things for which those words stand.[6][7][8][9]

But I get the feeling you're taking this too seriously, and I'm not enjoying this anymore. So let's end it here, I hope you have a good day!